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[correctpathos]

Deleted scenes from Paprika (2006)

this is literally my favorite video

[correctpathos]

Learning to Draw #2 - it's just shapes bro its ez xD

So as part of the course, the recommendation is to do some visual library exercises. As part of this, you draw a few of an item while also trying to apply the lessons regarding line weight, forms, and perspective. These are drawn from reference although it is recommended the 3rd one is drawn from 'memory' or that you make something up.

Below are two of these exercises - boots & helmets

Once again, in the moment I'm drawing I feel as if I am doing OK but on review I recognise the perspective is usually quite off. I imagine this is meant to come with further exercise/practice.

The course hasn't yet gone into shading/colouring so I'm often just either ignoring it completely for now or giving very vague indications if I feel like it.

I tried to approach the exercises by breaking down the reference into simpler shapes. This did help at times, but certainly at angles where you struggle to see most of the image (the shoe from behind for example) it is much harder to imagine those shapes in a 3d space. Particularly, it is even harder to draw those shapes - as it becomes harder to know which lines to 'ignore'.

This wasn't so bad for a shoe facing forward. However, I just couldn't get the front opening of the boot right. I had to step away and come back several times over the day because I was getting frustrated again. I eventually settled on a simplified version - but now that I look at it I can quite clearly see the problem was that I was completely off on the angle of the ankle! Again, I don't know why I am not recognising these issues when I am drawing - even with breaks

Finally the shoe from behind. I tried at various points to draw this using boxes/shapes but the lines became confusing to follow and I was struggling to even imagine how everything intersected. Again - I assume this is a practice thing.

Instead, I opted to break down some key outlines to try and follow those shapes instead. Once I drew it the first time, I felt like the shoe wasn't angled in the same way as my reference and attempted to redraw it by measuring where various parts started/ended in relation to each other (e.g the black line from the ankle to the heel). This sort of helped but as you can see, the boot curves quite unnaturally.

Furthermore, things are not proportionate to one another. Again, this is obvious on reflection and not when I am drawing (even if I try to look for it). It's like I'm 'zoomed in' on each area of the drawing and not seeing it as a whole.

The instructor doesn't really mention any tips for this - and often online tutorial use digital drawing where the reference is right next to your work. Sometimes they even overlay it. Perhaps measuring visually with a pencil each part? I dunno

[correctpathos]

Learning to Draw #1 - :)

My Manifesto that will be read as I lay destruction to The Works

I'm in my late 20s. I'm doing this because I can't find anyone else showing a similar process as a genuine sucky beginner. I used to draw a bit in my early teens. Slated for greatness at my art GCSE, a master of using the ruler for two-point perspective, I could achieve an 'A' they said - if I chose it - and I bet you're wondering how I got here... At home I drew my favourite anime characters. They weren't good, but whatever. I drew Itachi from Naruto and was so happy with this one that I took it to my parents to use their scanner. I subtly wanted to show it off, but I said I thought it would be cool if I scan it and colour it in on my cracked version of Photoshop CS5.

All I remember is they both saw it and had a good laugh at Itachi's hand. "It looks like E.T - 'phone home'". I didn't colour it in, and don't think I drew anything after that. The GCSE Art I took was bizarrely thin on teaching theory/skills and more about trying out a variety of creative mixed media - textured collages, pottery, and the like. I didn't draw a single thing and somehow achieved a B.

So anyway, I kept wishing I knew how to draw. Not as a professional or anything. Just enough to convey a sketch of an idea on the page that didn't look weird. What inspired me to pick it up again was some of the artwork in the RPG book for 'Warlock'. Thought it was rad as fuck. Wish I could do that.

Figuring out how to do this has sucked so much ass. So many 'beginners' post absolutely passable drawings to undermine your confidence, or they bait you in and say "yeah, I'm learning to draw...I stopped a few years ago when I finished up with Sistine Chapel". Fuckers. One egregious example was on the 'learntodraw' subreddit where someone said their husband started drawing a 'week ago', presenting a near photo-realistic image. Later admitting after backlash that their husband had only just started 'taking it seriously this week, but has drawn before'.

All the other guidance essentially consists of happy-go-lucky 'just draw :)' or locked-in 'drawing is like working out, put the reps in'. In-between are mentions of 'the fundamentals' but the best way to learn these are???

A few months ago I attempted 'Draw a Box'. I gave up because I'll be honest, it is incredibly boring to spend your evenings drawing 250 boxes, cylinders, and then once you finally think you're onto the interesting stuff you get asked to do several pages of arrows. I still hadn't drawn anything apart from basic shapes.

The structure was good for me though, so I thought let's buy an online art class. The course recommends joining their community and sharing your first work, which you must draw 'from your mind'. Here is Chroknight. This took approx 2 hours of really trying. This was still attempting to incorporate ideas about perspective and breaking down shapes I had heard about from Draw a Box. So this probably shows a month of learning. This is what I want to see when I look for a beginners journey.

I did this for a bit and drew some heads before becoming so fucking angry at the entire process. "People can be broken down into very basic shapes - squares, circles, triangles". Yet what really happens is a lot of complex rules around curving, avoiding tangent lines, and so on. I watch as the 'forms' get drawn in and say "okay, how the fuck do you make that look like a person?". My forms were often weirdly askew so I tried to correct them. The heads just don't look right. I was really struggling to spot that my forms were so wrong that it wasn't until I got to the details or the end that I was like "oh, wow this is really off". People who can draw say "just make sure your forms are correct first", and I get it - but often I can't tell until I start putting features on.

I know they're not like if you just picked up a pencil for the first time. This was around 2-3 months of learning. I was really feeling angry and impatient that after drilling facial features and head forms that they still looked so weird and were taking a significant amount of time to draw. Each of these took at least an hour. Could've watched X-Files.

"This is why an understanding of anatomy is so important" the instructor says on their demo. Proceeding to practically, to my untrained eye, ignore their forms and freely draw 'skin lines' to indicate anatomy. How do I do that? "Study anatomy". The assignment for this part of the course is to draw each body part 'until memorised'. More grinding. I was too angry and couldn't face it.

So here I am a few months on. I am going to restart the course and actually begin 'grinding'. Drawing regularly, from reference, whatever. I am banning myself from artist YouTube videos about how they learn because these people are already great and their advice amounts to variations of studying/grinding or even worse "learning to love art again". I am also leaving the communities full of people posting things I can only aspire to and saying "any feedback UnU?", "why do I suck? :(".

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